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France (and many of the worlds governments) has figured out that the only way to secure democracy is to require an electoral majority.

What Other Countries Know: Fairer [...]

Founder and leader of the political movement 'En Marche!' Emmanuel Macron speaks after winning the lead percentage of votes in the first round of the French presidential elections at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on April 23, 2017 in Paris. (Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)

This post originally appeared at Yes Magazine.

The remarkable Robert Maynard Hutchins, a law professor, chancellor of the University of Chicago and founder of the Center for Democratic Institutions, once proposed a working definition of democracy. A democratic community is a self-governing community, Hutchins said. Every member of the community must have a part in his government. The real test of democracy is the extent to which everybody in society is involved in effective political discussion.

This is a question facing the United States like never before. This weekend, for example, we witnessed democracy in action in France. And it was a democracy where every member played a part.

France (and many of the worlds governments) has figured out that the only way to secure democracy is to require an electoral majority, 50 percent plus 1. That means there are two elections: one that allows every party and every member to have a voice, then a second round that forces voters to elect a leader with a majority.

Electoral democracy in the United States is both unfair and weak.

Its because of this process that I didnt think Marine Le Pen and her far-right party would ever run France. She earned enough votes to get through the first round she could have even won then. But getting to a majority? I think not.

This same scenario played out in The Netherlands. Before the election there were many news stories about the potential impact of far-right candidate Geert Wilders and his anti-Europe and anti-immigrant views. Indeed, his Freedom Party did gain seats in the Parliament. But it was always unlikely that Wilders would ever form a government. Yes, he could win seats. Even the most seats. But a governing majority? No.

This is where electoral democracy in the United States is both unfair and weak.

Beyond the Electoral College failings, pull back and look at the bigger picture. President Donald Trump was elected with 46.1 percent of the vote, even though Hillary Clinton earned 48.2 percent. Minor-party candidates including Jill Stein and Gary Johnson picked up 5.7 percent.

But what if that was merely round one? Then Trump and Clinton would have campaigned again, one on one, and one of the candidates would have reached the magic mark of 50 percent plus 1.

Consider past elections. President Barack Obama won both of his elections with a majority in 2012 and 2008. And President George W. Bush would have been re-elected in 2004. But George Bush and Al Gore would have needed a runoff because neither had a majority. Same goes for Bill Clinton, who never did win a majority (43 percent in 1992 and 49.3 percent in 1996).

The point here is that US electoral politics has a structural problem, and structural problems can be fixed.

There are more democratic ways for the people to be represented in their government.

Many states have already done so. Republicans in Congress are giddy because there will be a runoff election in Georgia, where Democrat Jon Ossoff fell short last week in his bid to replace Tom Price. He only earned 48.1 percent of the vote and will now face Republican Karen Handel. This is likely to be a close race. But whoever wins will have done it with a majority. There will be no question about the legitimacy of the peoples message.

Yes, the Electoral College is a problem. So is the structure of the US Senate, where a vote from Wyoming is worth 15 times more than a vote from California. And the House has its own version of structure that is terrible for democracy: Gerrymandering and geography meant Republicans,in 2016, received just under 50 percent of the votes yet earned 55.2 percent of the seats.

There are more democratic ways for the people to be represented in their government.

States and cities have experimented with proportional representation, which gives every citizen a voice. In a liberal Western city, that means conservative voters could count on at least a percentage of the seats. Or vice versa.

One way to make a proportional system work is an instant runoff election. This process involves voters choosing a favorite candidate, then a second pick and a third. In each round the candidates with the lowest number of votes are eliminated mathematically. The winner earns a majority. Bernie Sanders favors such a system because it allows people to vote for what they really want without worrying about the possibility of them getting what they really dont want.

How do we make election reform happen? As a start, without the drawn-out process of a constitutional amendment, Congress could require a second round of presidential voting before the Electoral College meets. That still might not result in a majority, but at least it would be a step in the right direction.

A democratic country or community ought to be self-governing in a way that allows every member a fair part in effective political discussion. We must get there if we claim to be a democracy.

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Fairer Representation Makes a Stronger Democracy - BillMoyers.com

From a Canadian perspective, the most striking thing about the supposed anti-democratic political reforms approved by Turkish voters last week was their familiarity.

The majority of powers the Turkish president gained the freedom to appoint cabinet ministers and senior judges without parliamentary approval, the power to unilaterally dismiss parliament, the power to decree certain sorts of laws without parliament at all are all powers the Canadian prime minister already has. Yet no one would claim Canada is less than a full democracy, and its worth pondering why.

We can certainly question the Turkish governments intentions. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clear authoritarian tendencies and exists in a country with an authoritarian political culture. Turkey experienced multiple military coups throughout the past century including an attempted one inJuly and governments have routinely used state power and violence to trample the liberties of their critics.

Yet the Erdogan administrations official justification for the referendum (and presumably the motive of the 51percent of Turks who voted for it), that is, the need to make government more efficient and effective, is a common justification for the more authoritarian aspects of the Canadian political system as well. Any Canadian loudly worrying about the replacement of Turkish democracy with what amounts to a dictatorship in the words of the Globe and Mail editorial board should take a moment to consider how Canadas political system would look if a third world tinpot proposed adopting it.

Canadian prime ministers come to power by winning control of the lower house of Parliament, an achievement which almost never requires winning a majority of the popular vote. PMs then appoint members of the upper house directly, which means it can be taken for granted that any legislation they propose will quickly sail into law. The ruling party is run as a rigid hierarchy, and the notion of a free vote in Parliament, where MPs can vote their conscience rather than the prime ministers, are rare enough to require a distinctive term. Virtually every figure of importance in Ottawa, from cabinet members to judges to senior bureaucrats to committee chairs to military leaders to the head of the state broadcaster, are appointed by the prime minister with no oversight or veto by anyone.

Analysis of Canadian prime ministers revolves mostly around their competence in implementing an agenda, given theres little question the office has all the power it needs. Right-wing critics of former Tory prime minister Stephen Harper, for instance, almost exclusively criticize the last four years of his administration in which he held a solid majority of seats in Parliament for its lack of ambition, and such criticisms stick because unlike, say, an American president, there are no formal political checks to blame. Harper faced no legislative chamber controlled by the opposition party, nor a rebellious Freedom Caucus within his own. The Canadian Supreme Court did repeatedly overturn a number of his legislative initiatives, but by the end of his term Harper had appointed seven of the courts nine justices, so whose fault was that?

The realities of the Canadian system are controversial, but not universally so. Many Canadians occupying elite positions in the media or politics actually spend a fair amountof time defending the status quo or arguing for things to get even more regressive. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for instance, has been a long-time defender of an appointed Senate, and Michael Chong, a would-be leader of the Conservatives, successfully pushed for a new law allowing elected prime ministers to be deposed and replaced mid-term by their parliamentary caucus, similar to what is done in Australia.

The justification is always efficiency. The United States, with its feuds between the White House and Congress, and contentious Supreme Court nomination hearings, is often explicitly cited as an example to avoid, a system in which nothing gets done because there are too many competing poles of democratic authority. The central premise of the Canadian system, in which a prime minister is elected once every four years and given more or less free rein to do as he wishes, is considered basically correct, with talk of reform occurring mostly at the margins (i.e., who should prepare the list of Senate nominees for the prime minister to consider?).

It would be nice if Canadians and progressive Canada-admirers abroad could ditch the disingenuousness when judging the constitutional shenanigans of leaders such as Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin or Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro. Whats feared is not a political system, but the particular ideologue running it. Whats feared is chauvinistic strongmen, not strongmen per se.

To a certain faction, after all, subjecting a leader such asTrudeau to the restraints of the U.S. Constitution making his dreams of legalized marijuana, a perfectly gender-balanced cabinet, or a generous intake of Syrian refugees that much harder to implement would be seen as no less a global tragedy than anything going on in Turkey.

Link:
Canada is not a great democracy, but do we care? - Washington Post

NewsBusters (blog)

Are You Kidding Me? Keep Democracy From Dying...in a $25 WashPost T-Shirt? NewsBusters (blog) The Washington Post in February introduced a self-important slogan timed for the Trump administration: Democracy Dies in Darkness. And what better way to stand up for the First Amendment than with an overpriced cotton t-shirt? The Post on Wednesday ...

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Are You Kidding Me? Keep Democracy From Dying...in a $25 WashPost T-Shirt? - NewsBusters (blog)

The Peace Tower is seen on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on November 5, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Evaluating democracies is tricky work. There are competing conceptions of how a state should be organized and of which rules are bestindeed, weve disagreed with one another over this for thousands of years. Some prefer a participatory state, where individual citizens play an active role in self-government; others prefer an arrangement where very little is asked of citizens and in which governments are left to their own devices (between elections). Some want there to be as many elected positions in the country as possible, including, for instance, judges, so that popular control of who governs extends widely across the state; others argue that too much democracy leads to populist excesses and poor outcomes. There are many models of democracy that reflect a variety of values, priorities, and conceptions of how we ought to live together.

Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. Roughly, this means that our government is formed by the party or group of parties that can obtain and maintain the confidence of the legislature, and that our sovereign (and head of state) is bound by the Constitution. We also have regular free and fair elections, a legitimate judiciary, and a robust set of rights and freedoms. I hope youll pardon the quick civics lesson, but a recent piece by J.J. McCullough in the Washington Post has me concerned that one is necessary.

In a column initiallyheadlined Is Canada really a truedemocracy? and now titled Canada is not a great democracy, but do we care?, McCullough argues that Canada is not a great or full democracy because of excessive executive powers wielded by the prime minster and the Cabinet, especially wide-ranging appointment authority; strict party discipline; and a lack of American-style checks and balances. He caricatures defenders of the system by suggesting all they care about is efficiency and suggests that those who support Canadian democracy and criticize authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdoan, Vladimir Putin, or Nicols Maduro are being disingenuous. In doing this, McCullough sneaks in a false equivalency between Canada, one of the worlds top-ranked democracies, and Turkey, Russia, and Venezuela (which, spoiler, dont rank so highly) while caricaturing the Canadian system.

Here are some of the many reasons McCullough is confused and wrong. For one, while efficiency is one of the goods produced by the Canadian democratic system, accountability is central to how things operate here. When a single government with broad powers (which are constrained by ordinary law and by the Constitution, which is hard to alter) acts, it must answer to both the House of Commons (in which individual members of Parliament are, admittedly, underpowered) and to the electorate come election time. In Canada, theres a long, proud tradition of turfing governments that have become unpopular.

Over time, governments in Canada have also provento be responsive to the populationindeed, far more so than in the United States, a country for which McCullough betrays a bizarre endearment coupled with a shallow understanding of it. Despite how things may seem, folks here tend to get the policies and laws they prefer on most matters, at least eventually. So, not only are governments accountable to the House of Commons (day-to-day) and to the people (during elections), the work they do delivers what the people want. And when you take a broader view of Canadian democracy, things look even better. We enjoy a robust and active civil society and a free press, which act as further checks on the government and the state.

So, thus far, we have an efficient government that is constrained by ordinary and constitutional law, accountable to the Commons and the people, responsive to the population, and further checked by civil society and the press. The same cannot be said quite the same way of Turkey, Russia, Venezuela or, when it comes to responsiveness, of the United States.

Our country is marked by extensive civil liberties, a vibrant political culture, moderate political participation rates (on this we could do much better), a well-functioning government, vibrant pluralism, and regular, legitimate elections. These goods correspond to The Economists Democracy Indexan imperfect index, as all are, but a reliable one. Its no surprise that in 2016 Canada ranked 6th in the world (as a full democracy, compared to the United States, which sits at 21st and is classified as a flawed democracy).

What McCullough is expressing is not that Canada isnt a great or full democracy, but rather thathe doesnt like how our democracy works.Fair enough. Some dont. But when arguing about whether a country is a democracy or not, its cowardly, foolish, disingenuous, or some combination of the three, to smuggle in ones own definition of democracy, especially the unsophisticated and incomplete model offered by McCullough, to set up a straw-man attack against a system you find distasteful.

McCullough would have been better off arguingwhy he believes that a more populist, further-constrained, and legislature-dominant model would be more appropriate and democratic than the current model, which has served Canada well and made us one of the most robust and resilient democracies on the planet. Of course, shadowboxing is easier than battling a proper opponent, just as caricaturing Canadian democracy while lumping our country in with authoritarian regimes is easier than engaging with the layered and complex nature of how things work here. Sadly, though, facile hot-takes enjoy a marketand theyre certainly permitted in our democracy. Lucky us.

Read more:
Canada is a great democracy. But you need to understand it. - Macleans.ca

Famous Hollywood director Rob Reiner spoke out against President Donald Trump Monday, while also drawing harsh comparisons between the Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election and the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that killed 2,403 American citizens.

Speaking on MSNBC, Reiner insisted that normalizing the 2016 presidential election was a dangerous practice.

Theres a danger here of normalizing things. This is not normal. Weve had the greatest attack on this democracy since 1941, and we have to understand that, he began. Where are our Republican leaders elected leaders standing up and saying, Weve been attacked here, our democracy is being compromised?

Reiner, a longtime liberal activist, indicated that American society could be on the brink of collapse, pointing to the Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election as thepotential tipping point.

Great societies last 250, maybe 300 years, he said. Were at that cusp right now.

The question is: Will our institutions withstand this attack that weve had from a hostile foreign power? So far, were seeing our legislature not standing up, Reiner askedbefore singling out Republican lawmakersand condemning them for not speaking out against Russia.

He continued on his tirade, accusing Trump of attacking the American press.

The press is under attack by the president calling it fake news, theres another pillar of our democracy under attack, he said.

Will these institutions remain in tact in order for our democracy to survive? Reiner asked before expressing he wasnt sure what the answer would turn out to be.

(H/T: Washington Free Beacon)

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Hollywood director: Russian election involvement was worst attack ... - TheBlaze.com